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Copyright 2008-2018Slow Food Fast. All writing and images on this blog unless otherwise attributed or set in quotes are the sole property of Slow Food Fast. Please contact DebbieN via the comments form for permissions before reprinting or reproducing any of the material on this blog.

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SlowFoodFast sometimes addresses general public health topics related to nutrition, heart disease, blood pressure, and diabetes. Because this is a blog with a personal point of view, my health and food politics entries often include my opinions on the trends I see, and I try to be as blatant as possible about that. None of these articles should be construed as specific medical advice for an individual case. I do try to keep to findings from well-vetted research sources and large, well-controlled studies, and I try not to sensationalize the science (though if they actually come up with a real cure for Type I diabetes in the next couple of years, I'm gonna be dancing in the streets with a hat that would put Carmen Miranda to shame. Consider yourself warned).

It’s Valentine’s Day again–midweek, busy, too many items still on the list from last week to want a lot of fuss–or even be able to guarantee that my husband and I will both get home a reasonable time for dinner in a reasonable frame of mind to celebrate romance by cooking, or eating, something fancy. Last night I spied way too many people at the Trader Joe’s heaving large bars of chocolate and multiple bouquets of hothouse roses toward the cash registers. That’s okay–I’m not raining on anyone’s actual romance, but I have to admit I’m not feelin’ the official holiday symbols this week. Chocolate is good, don’t get me wrong. Flowers are pretty but require a vase and a pair of shears–usually right when I’m trying to cook dinner.

Last year we actually managed éclairs, and it was fun if a bit much–even though I managed to strip it down considerably with the microwave. Microwaveable ganache truffles are also easy, quick and fun if you’ve got the time to feed them to someone you love.

But with a kid who’s now waiting for college acceptances (and us parents anxiously figuring out both taxes and how to get around the outrageous Estimated Family Contribution)–well, we could all use a smallish midweek-style treat that doesn’t involve even that much effort to make–or work off afterward.

Lately I’ve been digging around in my cooking “blank books” from the last couple of decades. Part diary, part notes to self with or without illustrations in scratchy pen and occasional bragging, political satire, or outright swearing as the situation demands–when you’re writing cooking instructions for yourself, why not? I started these books long before the era of the blog, and hunting through them takes me back to what I was doing at the time.

Half the recipes I came up with are from before I figured out how to work a microwave, but I seem to have gone overboard as soon as I got enough of an introduction. One of the more unusual finds that worked really well a couple of years ago in a birthday dessert emergency (why do I tend to have these?) was a small but rich-tasting dessert halfway between cheesecake and flourless chocolate cake. The best parts:

A limited and very simple ingredient list and

You microwave it in 3 minutes. Seriously. Also,

It’s small, and there are no leftovers. Sometimes that’s a plus.

This would probably be a decent rescue option if you had to make dessert with whatever’s in the cupboard and the fridge, and you’d left things till the last minute…or even a little later than that. As slapdash as this quickie is, it’s got big, big advantages over anything storebought–time, taste AND chocolate. Also, modest calorie and carb counts.

Not everyone has a grocery that carries labaneh, which is kind of a Middle Eastern cross between sour cream and yogurt cheese. Nowadays, though, a lot of mainstream supermarkets are carrying plain Greek yogurt, which also works pretty well, even nonfat. And not every doctor approves of cheesecake in any quantity, much less huge. Damn, as I’ve said before, my cholesterol-packin’ genes (also jeans, but that’s another matter). The completely nonfat version of this dessert works fine and tastes good too, now that I’ve retried it, and all the ingredients are real.

So–whomp the ingredients together in a bowl, nuke it about 3 minutes, cool it, stick it in the fridge. Serve it with raspberries, peaches, cherries, whatever goes with chocolate in your book. Or jam (raspberry, apricot or sour cherry would be great on this, and so would marmalade…).

Chocolate Quickie

Serves 3-4 in smallish wedges if you don’t care how it looks–otherwise (probably smarter) pour it into small single-serving ceramic cups before microwaving. If you double the ingredients, it’ll need another minute or so in the microwave. Definitely serve with fruit.

4 T cocoa powder (20 g by weight; 8 g carb)

4 T sugar (60 g, all of it carb)

1 lg egg

1/2 c. (112 g by weight) labaneh, preferably 1/2 the fat, or else fat-free or 2% plain Greek yogurt. (about 3-5 g carb for any of them; about 7 g saturated fat and 10 g total fat for the full-fat labaneh, much less for the yogurt)

Whisk everything together until smooth in a microwaveable ceramic dish (big soupbowl is fine), or else mix and then pour into small microwaveable coffee or flan cups for individual servings (more attractive and probably less prone to serving mishaps where it falls apart when you cut it and lift it out). Microwave uncovered on HIGH 3 minutes for the big bowl, maybe 2 minutes for the individual cups, checking progress and adding extra time in 20-second increments just as needed so you don’t overdo it. When it’s done it’ll be a little dry around the edges and just pulling away from the bowl or edges of the cups. Cool to room temperature, cover and chill until it’s time to serve. Cut in wedges with a sharp knife if you went with the single bowl version. A pie server would probably help it keep its shape long enough to dish up.

Variations–add some grated orange peel or marmalade to the mixture; add a spoonful of almond extract, vanilla, amaretto, or hazelnut liqueur; add espresso instead of water…?

Carb counts: about 17 g apiece for 4 servings, 23 g each for 3 servings, all of it in the form of sugars.

That I don’t really want to hear about food or nutrition, pretty much ever, and certainly not as a way to welcome in 2018. Courtesy of the New York Times’ T Magazinethis week:

To usher in the new year, we asked creative people to share the homemade recipes they count on to detox, cleanse — and refresh.

Please. When you start describing breakfast in terms better suited to a moist towelette, and when the breakfast product itself comes out looking…well, let’s not even go there. I mean, check out the before and after food photos and tell me I’m wrong.

The fashion-slash-yoga world tends to be convinced that cleanses and detox schemes are legitimate. Physiologists, internists and RDs with board certifications tend to disagree.

Juicing, while obviously ultra-fashionable (still? boggles the mind), actually removes all the fiber, concentrates the sugars, and makes you wonder, given the thinness and the (frankly hideous) color of the stuff in the goblet in the right-hand “after” photo, whether it wouldn’t have been more genuinely nutritious, tastier, satisfying and visually appealing at the same time just to make some chunky vegetable soup–with garlic and herbs, not this sweet swill–and just wash and eat the apple with the peel. Because of course it would.

Another article in the series shows the breakfast for a conceptual artist who includes “human bacteria” and Teva sandals in her exhibitions (why? and I mean, are you really tempted to follow her food conceits after reading that?)–a bowl with about 10 hazelnuts and a dusting of chia seeds, not exactly a meal, and on the side a shotglass of something that is admittedly a much better green than the first interviewee’s due to dark leafy greens rather than celery and carrots, but would still be better left unjuiced, lightly cooked in stirfry or soup form, and without any sweet stuff in it. And preferably with a hit of garlic.

No major calories in this kind of breakfast, and perhaps we should be grateful that they don’t throw in any bacon or its variants with the veg, but really. Those breakfasts look pretty bleak and cold and less balanced than they ought to be, whether green or not-such-a-good-green.

Why the “detox” label? Why the crash-style diet drinkies? Why an article series–not even just one ill-judged gush piece–on food that doesn’t really look or taste all that good or deliver that much actual nutrition as given in the recipes, and frankly isn’t necessary if you actually eat things like vegetable soup or broccoli and other greens as part of your regular meals? Is the NYT readership really that into these things? Are they in it for the post-holiday self-castigation value?

None of the women interviewed (and of course they are all women, at least so far) are particularly unfit or overweight or heavily broken out or anything, and none of them look ill or hung over. Raises the question: just how badly did these people really eat during the holidays?

You’d think from the tone of the articles that these artists had all been rolling around in crappy green and red sugar cookies of increasing staleness and chugging quarts of full-on eggnog all December just for something to do. It’s the only way the articles even begin to justify themselves.

Back at the beginning of Chanukah in mid-December, I was too busy to do much celebrating or posting. We were traveling more than usual and my daughter’s college application essays were still in rough shape and we were both a little panicked. My poor husband was working 13-hour days and trying to calm down the younger post-docs that this wasn’t ALWAYS how R&D goes–just sometimes. It’s the price you pay for doing rocket science.

And it was pretty hot and dry around Los Angeles–hence all those fires in the news. Makes it hard to feel safe breathing. Still, we did manage to celebrate modestly, even though the first night of Chanukah was during the nailbiter Alabama special election, whose results wouldn’t be in until after supper.

In any case, I’m posting this now because these are relatively quick and easy (and inexpensive) appetizers. They’re not super-svelte but not overloaded either, and they taste good, even after Chanukah is over (but please, make a fresh batch…)

I don’t do deep frying for Chanukah, particularly not with olive oil, which is expensive and wastes the oil and the calories (gotta save a few for the gelt–chocolate coins). And the cleanup. As my forebears did, I want to make a little olive oil last a longer time by using it sparingly with foods that deliver a slightly better svelte potential than potato latkes. Well–most of my forebears were more worried about getting enough food during the winter, not about eating too much, but let’s say my parents, who grew up in America with enough potatoes and enough oil to give you a gallbladder (and if that’s not a Jewish expression, I don’t know what is). In any case, frugality is warranted but so is enjoyment. How to balance the two?

I’m in love with gilded cauliflower–I think I’ve mentioned it a few (hundred) times. It’s quicker to prepare and probably even somewhat cheaper in salad bowl volumes than pasta or potato salad most of the year. Certainly more nutritious and sophisticated. And it contains garlic. I recently reinforced that view with my entire congregation when I brought a Sicilian (Roman? don’t exactly know) roasted cauliflower, pepper and artichoke salad to a brunch buffet after services. I was pleasantly surprised that by the end of the meal most of it was eaten and actually complimented on. I know, that’s not a true indicator in a lot of places, but Jews aren’t generally shy about telling each other what they really think, especially my congregation, and especially about food.

But I wasn’t totally in the mood for more of the same, even though I had about a third of a big head of cauliflower and some marinated artichokes left over from a frittata. Somewhere in the depths of my grains-and-beans drawer in the fridge (most people use it as a meat drawer; I use it to foil moths) I had stashed a bag of chickpea flour (Bob’s Red Mill; about $2-3 for a 16-ounce bag) because I thought I might make felafel (microwaved and pan-browned, still not deep-fried). But that seemed like a bit of work and kind of heavy.

When I went to pick up my daughter from school, I still hadn’t quite figured out how or what I was going to do quickly but semi-festively on a weeknight with homework and college applications looming. I knew I wasn’t even going to bother wrapping the presents I had for her and my husband, and I had to scrounge for enough candles to light the first night’s lights (note to self, get an extra box, one for next year).

As we passed a new Indian restaurant on the way home, though, it finally clicked.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Last month every newspaper and online health magazine was brimming with handy top-10 tips to avoid stuffing yourself into a coma when you got over the river and through the woods to your in-laws’. Did it work? Did you try any of them? Was it even possible with the food available? MMMmmmph.

And…now we’ve started on the next round of holiday parties. And yes, I’m well aware, after last week’s “let the fools have their tartar sauce” tax subversion bill, that the tenor of my questions could equally apply to trickle-down economics, neocon “efficient” remote war management in Iraq and Afghanistan, “I am not a crook,” “too big to fail,” “No Collusion,” “FAKE NEWS,” and other fantasy favorites.

I don’t want to add to the burden of public speculation on the kinds of people who could genuinely fall for those slogans or excuse them in the face of the visible harm they do to all of us (okay, MOST of us. 99.9 percent of us). I’ve met some of these true believers, a few are actually friends, and they are otherwise decent, but really, stubbornly naïve is the kindest thing I can say. Tunnel vision, perhaps.

But back to holiday food–an even more fraught social topic. Because the same stubborn naïveté applies.

The trouble with most of the dutifully published top-10s for navigating party fare is how incredibly vague and trivial they are. They don’t give you a plate plan diagram like the ones for DASH/MyPlate balanced meals and the Idaho Plate™-style recommendations for Type II diabetes management. They don’t help you set a reasonable goal number for carb grams for the total meal including desserts and appetizers, and they don’t help you estimate anything or give you some sample sizes to go by.

Instead, they put the burden on you (or your kid) to select and use the fictitious ideal of self-control (more accurately known as “winging it”) in an environment that, to put it mildly, probably won’t support it. Oh, dear. JUST like the tax boondoggle.

There is also a big, big missing ingredient for most of these party suggestions: vegetables of worth. People don’t cook as much as they used to, chain restaurants and drive-thrus don’t really serve them, and the big food mags have almost dropped them from any party spread that isn’t for summer.

If there aren’t greens on the table, how do you fill half your plate with them as recommended by doctors and CDEs and RDs everywhere? If there’s one green vegetable dish and it’s breaded, panko’ed, crusted, dressed, nutted, topped, creamed or cream sauced, gratinéed, gravied, stuffed, sweetened, pancetta’ed, buttered or cheesed (I know, some of that litany is starting to sound a little obscene, as it should) to within an inch of its life, is it still worthwhile counting it as a green? Or is it actually mostly yet another starch with cheese, cream, butter, breadcrumbs, bacon bits and so on?

If you need to cover up any dish that thoroughly, it should tell you something pretty important about the recipe:

It is not exactly a taste explosion.*

Sorry, I WAS trying to get away from the obvious political metaphor, but it looks like it’s going to stick. (*And my thanks to the much-mourned Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series–and more specifically another of his books, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, for that line).

In any case, to survive the holidays and look good doing it, you need a winter holiday table that works better and tastes fresher and is actually lighter than the usual stuff and won’t leave you wishing for a sleigh to schlep your stomach home in after the party.

You need vegetabalia, ungunked. Some actual greens (or purples) on the table to lighten the load and redress the balance.

Actually, vegetabalia has always been a key part of classic dinner parties and it would be a shame to forget it, especially when you’re in the heart of winter. I don’t think I actually have ten ideas here, because as you may have seen in my previous attempts at top-10 lists, I tend to go a little overboard. Let’s see.

One way to do it without too much shock is to make the starch dishes a little smaller and the greens platters a little bigger and more numerous, colored, varied and–this is actually important, at least for a party–pretty.

Another is to add a green salad worthy of a celebration–keep it simple, elegant, just a couple of key and colorful ingredients that go together, not like something you scooped out of your local chain restaurant salad bar. See the big box of salad post for some inexpensive and winter-worthy vegetable selections that are easy to prep and store in the fridge for showtime and won’t look like “rabbit food.”

The third is to provide appetizers that are bigger on vegetabalia, ones that get beyond celery sticks, baby-cut carrots and bottled ranch dressing and are actually appetizing.

…Of course, the key element for avoiding idiots who take one look and say, “Oh. Rabbit food.” is not to invite them in the first place. The second strategy is surprise (in a good way, that is, not as in “celery with marshmallow fluff!”)

Good-looking vegetable appetizers that won’t bore people aren’t necessarily more expensive, especially if you buy bulk vegetables and wash and cut them up yourself. And some can actually be easier to make, and make look impressive, than lining up all those crackers and cheese slices neatly on a circular tray (my bane, I just don’t have the hostess/catering gene). The bonus: if you’re the host, you won’t have a load of crackers and cheese sitting around the house the next day, and you might have some fresh noshing vegetables left over, ready to grab and go.

Here are a couple of more specific (forgotten?) ways to make vegetabalia rock, cold and hot.

Crudités (#4)

The “just wash and nosh” scheme for raw vegetables is pretty easy and can even be elegant for a raw vegetable tray. You don’t need fancy chef-school knife skills or fancy expensive knife sets to make the magic happen, either.

You don’t have to do a massive tray or a zillion different expensive designer raw vegetables–three or four types on a medium platter with some contrast and a good fresh dip make a nice party display. At between $1 and $5-6 (for heirloom, top-end stuff or for portobello mushrooms) per pound, most noshing vegetables are also cheaper than many chips-and-dips junk foods, designer breads, cheeses, sliced deli meats, and premade party platters of just about any kind.

Do get away from the tedious carrots-and-celery-sticks-and-ranch-dressing version, even if you are doing carrots and/or celery. Celery and carrots are still good, mind you, but you might want to grow them up a bit, cut them differently, add one or two less common dipping vegetables for variety and something fresher and more interesting than ranch dressing for a dip or spread.

Usually I’m against “fashion vegetables,” heirloom everything and bagged, prewashed/pretrimmed veg because of the price markup compared to bulk. But if you’ve got access to something a little extra in an unexpected color (purple is good, so is bright yellow), like purple cauliflower or multicolored peppers, you might want to go for it just once in limited amounts and mix them up with the regular vegetables.

And there are non-designer vegetables with enough mix of color and flavor to do the pretty at a slightly lower price point.

Regular globe radishes are pretty bright and crunchy and eye-catching and peppery–lop off the thin root and most of the stem; wash them really well to get out any sand and keep them whole or slice them in half lengthwise. If you have a local farmer’s market that doesn’t slap on chichi markups in the price per pound, or you happen to see a bunch of longer or otherwise eye-catching radishes for about the same price in the produce section of your grocery store, go for it.

Fancy variety pods like sugar snap peas and snow peas–even raw green beans–are a nice choice too. You can get bulk snap and snow peas for about $3/lb. at the Ralph’s/Kroger’s and fresh green beans are sometimes on sale between Thanksgiving and New Year’s for under $1/lb. but usually about $2/lb.

Trader Joe’s sells 2-lb. bags of multicolored full-sized organic carrots for about $2 at this writing. White, deep purple with a gold core, bright yellow…pretty dramatic and they mix up nicely with the cheaper orange ones without being a lot more expensive.

If you can get colored full-sized bell peppers, maybe get one or two, and choose colors other than green. Sliced lengthwise they go pretty far in brightening up a vegetable tray.

This time of year is fraught with newspaper, food mag, blog, and Twitter advice about how to set the perfect iconic Thanksgiving table with all the right stuff. If you’re carb-conscious, weight-conscious, health-conscious, or just worried you don’t have the classics down fashionably enough, it can be more nervewracking than calling the Butterball hotline while your turkey (or Tofurky–is there a Tofurky hotline?) sags on the counter waiting for expert advice.

So…

I was going to do my usual roundup of microwave-friendly vegetable (and pie) recipes for Thanksgiving–things that can help green the table (the only real remedy for huge stodgy menus) at the last minute with relatively little fuss and expense. If you want that, I’ve got it–hit the new, updated-for-2017 Thanksgiving roundup link in the sidebar. Or you can just search “Thanksgiving” in the little box and find more posts than I realized I had–it’s kind of tedious scrolling through all of that and wondering whether there’s anything amusing in them (answer: yes, and sometimes it involves turkey-wrestling). Hence, the new link in the sidebar.

But then again, this morning I caught sight of an email from Vroman’s, my local independent bookstore, which was hosting a food drive for one of Pasadena’s innovative food pantries and homeless services organizations, Friends In Deed. I missed the drive last week, but I had heard the retiring director speak last March and the new director is a friend (and my former rabbi). And I thought, this is what we forget in all the babble of newspaper articles on stuffing and how to make more of it, use cauliflower rice instead, or avoid it altogether.

You can do any or none of those things. But while you’re thinking about the shopping list of the century, there is one way to stop panicking and get real about how many potato and sweet potato dishes your guests need on the table and how hard it will be to fit in the extra one your sister-in-law always carps about when you skip it.

Find your local food pantry or homeless shelter online or in the old-fashioned phone book. They have a list of most-needed grocery and toiletry items, and if they don’t, use the list below and just add “new toothbrushes, toothpaste, bars of soap and shampoo.”

When you do the frenzied last-minute shop, add at least one item–and if you can, a bag of 5-10–to your shopping list, and bring it over to your shelter. Or send a cash donation online or by mail–keep it local, you know your town almost certainly has or needs a food bank, and your cash donations can go far. It doesn’t have to be big to help, and it all adds up.

The people you help will have something to be thankful for. And you will too.

And there’s that side benefit–if someone at your table complains that you didn’t make their version of whatever dish it is, you’ll have the perfect, righteous response.

Here’s the list from my local food pantry and homeless services organization. Take a visit online and see some of what they’re doing–it’s innovative and might inspire you.

Friends In Deed, an interfaith collaborative, is dedicated to meeting the many needs of the most vulnerable residents of greater Pasadena-homeless and at-risk individuals including women and children. Celebrating more than 120 years of service, we meet the needs of our clients by leveraging our small, but dedicated staff, with many volunteers. Friends In Deed meets people where they are, without judgment or restrictions that deny people the help they need.

The Pantry’s Most Needed Shelf-stable Items:
“Gold” Items – these items are extremely popular and are the most difficult to keep in stock:
Peanut Butter, Canned Tuna/Chicken, Cereal, Rice, Cooking Oil, Sugar, Flour, & CAN OPENERS

Butternut, kabocha, red kuri, Hubbard, turban, pumpkin (and acorn, and delicata, and all the rest)–if you’re microwaving a large red squash, you may as well have another easy recipe in your back pocket.

This is one from my gourmet cousin up north, something she served us as a Friday-after lunch a couple of Thanksgivings ago, and it’s both beautiful and surprising with almost no effort.

Red Squash Slices on Arugula with Tehina

I know, I know. I’ll never get that chichi cookbook deal giving it away that fast. You wanted suspense. Obviously.

But really. If you have a couple of big chunks of leftover roast or preferably microwaved butternut squash, peel and slice it up–cold or hot, either is fine. Put down a bed of arugula or other salad greens, fan out the slices of butternut, mix up a little tehina (sesame paste) with lemon juice, a small clove of garlic and an optional pinch of salt, add just enough water to get it pourable and drizzle it over the squash.

[Note: if you’re making tehina sauce yourself, put a large dollop of the sesame paste in the bowl first, then add the juice of a lemon and stir slowly with a fork, then the garlic and salt, then water by spoonfuls. If you try to add tehina paste to water, you get murky, milky thin stuff that never really emulsifies and you waste your expensive ingredients. I learned this the hard way in a kibbutz kitchen while the two crazy ladies I worked for cackled at me and smoked inches of ash over the food, so take my advice to heart. I’d never want to put you through that humiliation.]

If you want color and glamour, go for the Trader Joe’s or similar smoked paprika and sprinkle it lightly over the platter. Roasted sunflower seeds (shelled, obviously) are nice too. As are hot pepper flakes if you like heat. Sumac (the purplish red sour spice, not the irritating weed) is also pretty if you can get it where you are, but smoked paprika really hits the spot.

If you’re being impressive at short notice and you have an organic kabocha squash, scrub it well, cut off the cap carefully with a very sharp knife and dig out all the seeds, put the cap back on, then stick it on a microwaveable plate (Corelle is probably the best) or in a microwave-safe casserole dish, with either Saran wrap or a big microwaveable bowl as a cover. Drizzle a quarter-inch or so of water around it on the plate, hit it for 8 minutes and see if it’s cooked through (depends on the size of the squash). Give it another 3-4 minutes if it’s not quite there, until you can poke a sharp knife through it easily at a thick point. Let it sit 10-15 more to steam further and/or cool a bit. The kabocha is thin-skinned enough to slice through and eat the skin if you want, and it’s a pretty contrast between the dryish, nutty orange flesh and the thin green skin. Drain and bring the whole thing to slice at the table if you feel like it, and pass the tehina sauce.

It’s just past Halloween and soon to be Thanksgiving. The pumpkin bins at the Trader Joe’s will probably disappear next Tuesday morning, very convenient. The worst of it is, the only edible-grade pumpkins they sell are the little pie pumpkins. The gorgeous Cinderella’s carriage ones, a dusky pale orange-gray, are a staple of Mediterranean cooking from soups to couscous to filled fillo spirals and beyond. Even candied pumpkin as a spoon sweet. But the ones the supermarkets here sell are grown for looks only with questionable water, fertilizers and pesticides, and are presumably just for decorating your lawn and attracting rodents.

It would be so nice if they sold edible larger pumpkins like the Cinderella kind–organic ones? even in wedges, as they do in European and North African farmers’ markets. It’s a shame to see so much food potential wasted like that.

Meanwhile, Starbucks, Cinnabon and other mall favorites will no doubt be assaulting the national palate once again with an overload of nutmeg and cinnamon extracts–the gastronomic equivalent of “Rockin’ Around the Xmas Tree” and “Feliz Navidad” played endlessly over the PA system wherever you go shopping. Taste is no object.

So my grumbling has resulted in a couple of searches for pumpkin with spices that don’t threaten anyone’s latte. I’ve been cruising my ever-growing collection of Mediterranean and Near Eastern cookbooks in search of good vegetarian and vegetable dishes that I can speed up with the help of a microwave without losing flavor.

Just by starting with a microwaved butternut or other whole red squash, you can cut the roasting, peeling and chopping time and effort (and danger of self-inflicted wounds) way down. Some decent savory recipe ideas can be done with ordinary cans of plain packed pumpkin too.

Then my preference is to go savory rather than sweet. It’s more interesting, for one thing, and it’s more versatile too. Finally, I look to see if I can make some of the recipes I find faster, svelter–and preferably both.

I see little benefit to using heavy cream, full sticks of butter, and extra egg yolks for “richness,” which mostly means as bulking ingredients more than for actual flavor. My head, my heart, my doctor and my hips are all in accord with me on this one. Besides, I’m a cheese freak. In my world, you need to save up your limited saturated fat allowance for stilton or chevre or camembert–something with funk and flash and that lightningy je ne sais quoi.

My lineup of adaptations so far:

Kolokithopita

Like spanakopita triangles or fillo rolls but instead of spinach and feta, use cooked and fairly dry pumpkin (or in this case butternut squash) mashed with feta, oregano and/or thyme (or fresh za’atar if you can get it), hot pepper flakes, a little tehina sauce or some garlic and lemon.

If you’re only making 4-8 rolls or triangles, you can stick them on a length of foil that fits your toaster oven. Use a sandwich baggie over your hand to dab very sparing amounts of olive or expeller-pressed grapeseed oil or other light vegetable oil on each individual fillo sheet before folding in thirds, putting the filling on and rolling or folding. Brush the tops very lightly with a little more oil, turn down your toaster oven settings to about 400F and bake for about 10 minutes. When the tops are golden brown, turn the pastries over very gently and bake the whitish bottoms a little longer.

Pumpkin Gorgonzola Flans with Toasted Walnuts

Butternut squash savory flan, slimmed down

adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table

This one has to be microwaveable–it’s a custard base, after all. It also, and I mean this, has to be svelte-able. Really. Greenspan uses 3 eggs plus 2 yolks and half a cup of heavy cream for only one 15-ounce can of packed pumpkin. That’s pretty obscenely rich, especially with 4 ounces or so of crumbled gorgonzola and some toasted walnuts sprinkled over the 6 individual ramekins before baking in a water bath in a conventional oven. And she suggests creme fraiche or sour cream as a garnish? Yikes.

Flan in quarters

Microwave-safe ceramic ramekins are pretty inexpensive if you shop Ross for Less or Target. I didn’t have gorgonzola or any kind of bleu on hand, so I winged it for concept with some feta. I will say I’ve noticed that at least Stella gorgonzola melts into a runny sauce in a microwave–good if you want a smooth gorgonzola salad dressing, not so good for a recipe like this where you don’t want it to disappear into the flan. Maybe a more solid bleu like Stilton will melt and run but I’m hoping it stays together better. Also, nuts in the microwave–maybe not a good idea, at least for big chunks. Even with the moisture from the flan taking the brunt of the energy, I kind of think you’re at risk of scorching them from the inside out, particularly if they’re on top of the flan. Better to roast them separately on a lowered heat in the toaster oven–200-250F for 5 minutes or so while the flan is going in the microwave, then sprinkle them on afterward as a garnish.

My half-recipe test came out pretty delicious on its own merits and I’m going to buy a small wedge of Stilton to try next. Because I mashed the butternut squash with a fork rather than using a purée, it’s a little rougher and less refined but the fresh taste is noticeable and lighter. Using plain nonfat yogurt in place of the heavy cream also made it obviously lighter and played up the tang that gorgonzola and bleu normally contribute. The acidic yogurt may be counterintuitive if you’re thinking conventional cooking, but the small addition of flour plus the egg plus the starch and fiber in the squash prevent it from separating and curdling under heat.

Half-recipe pumpkin flan for lunch (serves 1-3 for lunch or an appetizer/side dish)

6-7 oz/185 g chunk of butternut squash

1 lg egg

1/4 c or large heaping soupspoon of plain nonfat milk-and-cultures-only yogurt (not even Greek! just the cheap regular!)

small clove of garlic, mashed/minced/grated

pinch or stem worth of thyme

1 t flour

1 oz crumbled feta

sprinkle of smoked paprika, grind of black pepper to taste

toasted walnuts, optional

Mash everything up to the feta together in a microwaveable soup bowl, sprinkle on a little paprika and/or pepper, cover the bowl lightly with a lid or saucer, microwave 3 minutes on HIGH. Lift the lid carefully to check–it may still be liquidy in the center but cooked towards the outside rim. If the bowl’s very hot, let it sit covered another couple of minutes, jiggle again to see if the center’s cooked. If not, give it another 30 seconds and let sit again to cool down enough to handle. Cut into 3-4 pieces and serve–garnish as desired.

About Slow Food Fast

Downloadable Docs

This is my quick-and-dirty printable PDF version of the new Dietary Guidelines, which as of January 2016 are still available only as an online site at health.gov. If there's enough demand and the USDA delays printing, I may go back and fix it up a little.

Pyrex Warning

Many of my older posts call for microwaving recipes in Pyrex bowls or pie plates. But my plates are the old Corningware USA ones. The new "Pyrex" plates and casseroles -- made outside the US -- are made of much weaker glass and can crack or even explode with any temperature fluctuation. DON'T USE THEM. The January 2011 Consumer Reports tested the new cookware in-house and found they have big safety problems, despite the company's claims. Go with microwaveable and oven-safe stoneware instead.